[OTDev] API change - drop [] from query strings - what do you think?

Nina Jeliazkova jeliazkova.nina at gmail.com
Mon Nov 8 17:23:07 CET 2010


Hello All ,

I would like to propose to drop square brackets from query parameter names
throughout OpenTox API , e.g. parameters like feature_uris[] to become
feature_uris.

The reasons are

1) Some implementations (rightly) URL encode the parameter names in URL
query string, however, this is not correctly understood by all clients.

http://localhost:8181/dataset/1?feature_uris%5B%5D=http%3A%2F%2Flocalhost%3A8181%2Ffeature%2F3

2) Not sure what was the original idea behind [] , but they don't really
impose any control on how many instances of particular parameter should be
there, so it's more of a syntax headache.

3) Finally, parameters like ?feature_uris%5B%5D=..  are not quite readable,
even if interpreted correctly.

What do you think?

Nina



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